Jeffrey Cramer, who says he can support himself indefinitely as long as he spends just $500 a month, talked to us about bikes, bike theft and living outdoors in Portland.(Photos by M.Andersen/BikePortland)

“At that time of night, $10 for a bike ride home was a good deal — you can’t get a cab back to where I live for $10,” he said. “It wasn’t ’til I got home that I realized I was riding a gem.”

Cramer, 48, doesn’t want to say exactly where he lives, except that it’s “way the fucking hell out there.” But five days after he turned down most of a $100 reward for tracking down the owner of the bike he’d bought from the man who stole it, this self-described “vagabond” was willing to have a candid conversation about his decision to live outdoors, the importance of bikes in his life and his own thoughts about Portland’s underground economy of stolen bicycles.

A big crowd absorbed knowledge from a trio of experienced bike adventurers.(Photos by J. Maus/BikePortland)

A much larger than expected turnout at last night’s Bikepacking 101 Seminar confirmed that interest in backroads and adventure bicycling is at an all-time high. Either that, or people just jumped at the chance for some great free beer, catch up with friends (and make new ones) and a peek inside the headquarters of Chris King Precision Components.

In all seriousness, the 200+ people that packed the King Cafe was yet another reminder that we’ve hit a tipping point in this type of riding. From “gravel grinding” on beefed up road bikes to multi-day trips on fully decked-out fat-bikes, it seems like everyone is getting excited for two-wheeled adventures these days.

How big was the crowd? It took me a few shots with a wide angle to get it all…

Portland’s construction of low-traffic, low-stress neighborhood streets for biking, walking and recreation has slowed to a crawl. What happened?(Photos by J.Maus and M.Andersen/BikePortland)

If Portland has contributed any innovations of its own to the craft of designing great streets, it’s this two-word idea: neighborhood greenways.

A remix of ideas from Utrecht and Vancouver BC, these low-cost retrofits of low-traffic side streets — adding speed humps, sharrow markings, traffic diverters and signalized crossings of big arterials — have taken the national bike world by storm since Portland’s Greg Raisman and Mark Lear developed the concept in 2008 or so. In 2010, a citywide network of greenways became the first priority to emerge from Portland’s landmark 25-year bike plan.

The opening of the Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge in July 2012 came amid much fanfare. The $13.6 million span over Interstate 5 provided a much-needed connection between the Lair Hill neighborhood and the burgeoning South Waterfront.

While it’s a beautiful bridge to walk and bike on, it has one major flaw. There’s no ramp to make bicycling easy and smooth at the transition to the South Waterfront side.

Once you get to the east side of the bridge, the design requires people to: carry and/or push their bikes on six flights of stairs with only a narrow and hard-to-reach wheel gutter to ease the task; or use an elevator.

And unfortunately, the elevator — which is by far the preferred option if you are biking, especially with kids and/or with a large bike — has proven to be unreliable.